Monday Motivation: Marcel Durbau fulfills a rider’s dream in an unknown territory
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Crankworx is the competition that any extreme Mountain Bike rider dreams of. The equivalent to the Pipeline of surfing, to the X Games for urban and snow sports. The place that Marcel Durbau, in the more than 10 years that he has been dedicated to MTB, has always dreamed of. A dream that has come true.
“Up the Slope” reviews the adventure of this member of the Blue Banana’s Adrenaline Crew, who traveled last summer from the small town of La Batllòria (Barcelona) where he lives to Canada’s SilverStar Bike Park to compete at the Title Slopestyle, the newest addition to the Crankworx FMBA Slopestyle World Championship circuit. A 10-day trip into the unknown, to the
biggest jumps he had ever seen, in which he committed to competing against the best riders in the world, but with a clear objective: go all out.
“Canada is like another world. The dirt jumps have nothing to do with the ones in Spain. I had never competed or even trained in jumps of this size. My mentality has changed, now I know what I need at home”
All this is reflected in a Blue Banana Studios project filmed and edited by the filmmaker Ibai Mielgo. In it, you can see how Marcel Durbau faces one of the biggest challenges of his life in the place where the best in the world live, train, and compete. With an unexpected ending that represents another step in his career, in the necessary progress to end up fighting for the
podium or, who knows, to win.
After an experience of this caliber, Marcel Durbau has achieved the best result of his career in a Gold event of the FMB World Tour and a podium finish at Happy Ride Weekend, the flagship event of La Poma Bikepark. And as a good architect and builder, he has redesigned and retouched his home trails to continue evolving and inspire others along the way.
